Size of the Print - 35mm Still Photography vs. Movie Film

<p>One thing I frequently see on here is people asking, "If I want to make a certain sized print, which format should I shoot? 35mm, medium format, large format? If I'm going to shoot medium or large format, should I shoot 6x4.5, 6x6, 6x7, 4x5, 8x10? And once I decide on my format, which film should I use? How much enlargement can a certain film stand?"</p>

<p>My question is this - why are optical limiting factors such an issue with still photography, when with motion picture film, they're more or less shooting 35mm and projecting it onto huge movie screens? Furthermore, since 35mm motion picture film runs through the camera up and down and not sideways, the size of the frame is not the 24x36 that we're used to. Depending on the format shot (anamorphic, Super 35 4-perf, Super 35 3-perf, academy ratio, flat widescreen, cinemascope), the amount of usable negative increases or decreases, but never reaches the larger size that a 35mm still photographic negative gives us. Yet, many movies nowadays are being mixed with footage that is shot on IMAX cameras, and the standard 35mm footage is being blown up to be projected with the IMAX footage (and looks darn good). The frame given by a 35mm motion picture negative is more along the size of a frame taken from a "half frame" camera, like a Canon 7D.</p>

<p>So, why does motion picture film withstand the enlargement process so much better, or at least seem to? Is it that the workflow is less optical these days and a lot of new technology exists within the digital intermediate phase to adapt films for projection? Is is that films are being projected at a rate of 24 fps and the constant motion makes it difficult to find things like grain and other artifacts? Is it that film is shot on negative stock (usually) and then printed on different film meant for release prints?</p>

<p>And just a random question... more for the digital forum, sorry... when a full frame DSLR (5D Mark 3, D800) shoots video, does it use the full sensor, or crop off a part of the sensor to fit a certain aspect ratio (I think natively a 1.78:1). Does shooting that way give you a larger "negative" area than if you shot 35mm motion picture film?</p>

<p>Sorry if some of the questions here are out of the scope of photo.net. I used to do a lot of cinematography, mainly using 16mm and Super16mm, but also did a small amount of work using digital and 35mm. I eventually stopped when I took up still photography. Last November, I shot my first project in 6 years using a 5D Mark II.</p>

<p>John-Paul, The resolution issue has to do with the speed with which you're viewing the film passing in front of you. That's a lot of fps, so you don't get a real sense of resolution, and it can pass on a large screen. Also, you're viewing a movie screen from some distance away, much like a billboard. If you get up close to the billboard, you generally see a picture is made up of large dots. I used to print images from 8mm, 16mm, and 35mm motion film, and the resolution of the image wasn't that impressive.</p>

<p>So the motion picture enlargement process is not better, just faster. As for DSLR, I some cameras shoot full frame, and some crop the sensor for shooting motion. For those cameras that shoot full frame, compared to the crop of a 35mm film, it should be sharper, but I don't know the details of how DSLRs capture motion.<br>

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If you look at a single movie frame, it's quite grainy. The 24fps reduces the apparent grain and the screen is pretty far away, making

the enlargement much less than you imagine.

 

35mm for IMAX probably has had some digital "cleaning up" also, but not usually done for 35mm or digital release.

 

Amazing isn't it?

<p>One could write volumes and not completely answer - however, motion picture shown on the big screen requires an enormous degree of enlargement. As a rule, motion picture film is high resolution -- super fine grain stuff. Also, consider that the final image is a release print which is a copy made from the original camera film. This copy has undergone a resolution loss as it is second or third generation. The fact that the motion picture experience allows a substandard image as compared to still photography is tied to eye/brain pathology; we see what we want to see. A key factor is the fact that each frame has a different and unique granularity. When multiple frames with a random distribution of granularity are projected consecutively a smoothing effect takes place. In other words the reduced optical proprieties of the film and projector system are allowable. The bottom line is; still photography usually must meet a higher standard</p>

<p>Hi Michael and B G and thank you both for your replies.</p>

<p>Michael - I've never done print images from 8mm, but a few years ago, I had some frames of a 16mm and 35mm negative scanned, enlarged and printed at DuArt in NYC. They weren't large prints - 8x10 or 8x12, but the 35mm material definitely held up better than the 16mm material. I remember them saying the 16mm film was scanned at 2K and the 35mm film at 4K.</p>

<p>I saw The Amazing Spider-Man the other night in IMAX 3D and was amazed at the sharpness of the image on the IMAX screen. Afterwards, I read that the movie was shot digitally using the RED Epic camera at 5K resolution. By no means am I turning this into a film vs. digital debate for sharpness, resolution, etc.</p>

<p>B G - I recently got the Alien Quadrilogy on Blu-ray. I was watching the second film, Aliens, on both my iMac and a Sony LED TV. iMac monitors must have higher resolution or something than a Sony 55" LED 1080p tv, as I did notice a lot more grain in the darker scenes of Aliens when viewed on the iMac. That seems to be my general experience while watching movies on my iMac vs our tv, especially with SD movies, the iMac seems to reveal limitations of the source format a lot more.</p>

<p>I remember when I took 35mm Cinematography, the teacher said that a the resolution of a 1080 HD television or HD camera, even the pro ones, is 1K (1080 lines). He was, of course, advocating film over digital and saying that even when film is scanned, it's scanned at higher resolutions than digital is capable of. That class was back in 2005 tho. Still, this will not turn into a film vs digital debate :)</p>

<p>Also, remember that they don't make high speed motion picture stocks, as they do for still photography. Last I knew, the fastest Kodak made was ASA 500. They had an 800 speed color negative for a while, but it was discontinued. Not sure about Fuji, as I never shot as much Fuji stock. As for Kodak's B&W negative selection, you had two - Plus-X, at ASA 80 or Double-X, at ASA 200.</p>

John, your teacher was misinformed :)

 

HD is 1920 pixels across. A 2k film scan is roughly 2000 pixels across. Almost the same resolution. A professional

digital cinema capture at 2k will look more detailed than a 35mm film capture. 2k output to film print looses a bit of

detail and usually looks inferior to digital projection IMO.

 

4k film scans are still pretty rare these days. Even 4k digital capture is almost always mastered to 2k final output for

digital and film prints.

 

As for your iMac, it is probably showing the wrong black level and or gamma, and thus more digital artifacts and grain

than should normally be seen. I didn't know you could watch blu ray movies on a Mac either. Could you tell me how

you do that?

<p>IMO, most people's biggest objection to a print / enlargement that is too large for its source (film or digital capture) is grain / noise. But 35mm movie film is normally projected at 24 frames per second, so every second the eye and brain more-or-less average the random grain from 24 individual frames, which greatly reduces the apparent grain. Even at that, to me, films often look at least somewhat grainy.</p>

<p>The second biggest objection is probably detail, resolution, and sharpness--related but not identical concepts. To me, films often look slightly unsharp and lacking in fine detail. The motion again plays an important role, because you can't pick up on the unsharpness or lack of detail. Also, I seem to recall recently seeing somewhere (here?) the assertion that SMPTE standards call for projected 35mm frame-to-frame "jitter"--the imperfect alignment of a frame to the preceding one--limited (maximum) to an amount that would imply (if I understood the standard correctly) resolution comparable to standard-def video, coupled with an assertion about typical performance of a well-maintained projector that would imply resolution slightly less than 1080p. In other words, shoot a stationary test chart and project it on 35mm film in a typical theater, and the resolution will max out roughly in the neighborhood of the equivalent of a typical 2 or 3 MP camera. Supposedly when George Lucas decided to "film" the fourth <em>Star Wars</em> movie using HD video, his take on this was that film might offer theoretical advantages, but in practical terms 1080p was equal in resolution and much easier to work with.</p>

<p>Also, back in the day, the film projected in the theater was a third- or later-generation copy of the film shot; this further degraded grain and resolution. Today film may be scanned and manipulated digitally, which does help, but if printed to film for distribution, you still have the film issues.</p>

<p>Last but not least, you can scan film at all sorts of crazy resolutions--8,000 or 10,000 ppi even. But by and large, color film contains little or no real detail approaching those resolutions. For 35mm still film, the Kodak and Fuji data sheets indicate that even their highest-resolution films, with typical subject contrast (not 1000:1 test charts) are down to about 50% MTF response and falling fast at around 70 lp/mm (which is about 3600 ppi). If you accept, say, 4000 ppi as the practical limit, that 35mm movie frame (about 18 x 23mm) can only supply about 2800 x 3600 pixels--significantly more than current 1080p, but not a lot compared to what you'd want for a really large print, and probably overkill if you're going to print it back to film for projection.</p>

 

<p>B G - Oops. I guess he was telling us that 1080 was 1K resolution by gauging the height, not the width of the image. So, it is the other way around? As for watching a Blu-ray movie on a Mac, you just need an external (or internal) Blu-ray drive, which Apple doesn't sell, but check out OWC (www.macsales.com). Then, there's a program called Mac Blu-ray Player, which plays Blu-ray movies, but the player program unfortunately doesn't recognize menus. Still, it's the only thing out there for Macs, more or less.</p>

<p>Dave - I think Lucas' big thing for shooting digitally is that it's easier to composite effects in the digital realm, since he has so many of them, as compared to shooting on film, scanning it and then going back to print. Start digital, edit digital and export to whatever he needs.</p>

<p>Digital cinema is 2048 pixels wide.<br>

2k to 35mm film print is 1828 pixels wide.<br>

720p digital (1280x720 pixels) projected digitally looks about as detailed, and maybe better than a typical film print at the multiplex.</p>

<p>So then, how do you measure the pixels of a film print that are projected? Or, are you assuming they are projected digitally as compared to by a print in a projector?</p>

<p>On the "Once Upon a Time In Mexico" DVD, Robert Rodriguez mentions he shoots digitally because while film has a lot of detail, it's the negative that has the most detail and each time you strike a print, you lose detail. He goes on to say that when he shoots Danny Trejo's scarred face, he wants all that detail showing on screen.</p>

John-Paul,

 

I was just listing the file size/dimensions that are used to output to the film recorder to produce the negative for film

printing. Actual resolution on the film print is a bit less.

Gotcha. Where did you come across all of this knowledge?

John-Paul,

 

I'm a cinematographer and sometimes motion picture colorist (Photoshop for movies) :):)

<p>Oh, very cool. What do you shoot?</p>

<p>Clips from my most recent film: http://brucealangreene.com/8datestheater2.html<br>

Master file was 2048x856 pixels made from 4096 pixel digital original file :)</p>

<blockquote>

<p>Last I knew, the fastest Kodak made was ASA 500.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>That film (5219) holds up quite well even at ISO 6400 without pushing (at most). Shadow detail would be lost to some degree. I imagine that this is one reason Kodak does not have a faster movie stock. Also, adding lights would be better than using a super-fast stock.</p>

<p>FWIW, some TV shows are shot in S16 (with NR).</p>

<p>Several years ago someone calculated that a 35mm frame shot under ideal conditions with a very good lens and on slow color print film could contain 100MP of information. To get that you would need to scan at 8,500 dpi. At that level you would probably see some imperfections in the film base. Scanning very small formats seems to be difficult. Canon made two film holders, for 8mm and 16mm film, which would be used with its 20mm and 35mm bellows macro lenses. The main benefit of these set-ups is that they hold everything in place so the film is perfectly parallel to the lens. I would like to find a set of these holders and see if they can be used with the non-Canon micro lenses I already have. Even a very good macro lens like the 55/2.8 AIS Nikkor is not optimized for the magnification needed to enlarge an 8mm frame. I would use either a 12.5/2 or 25/2.5 Bellows Rokkor, A reversed cine lens coulod also be pressed into service. </p>

<p>B G - Nice reel!</p>

<p>Karim - I agree. It's always preferable to add lights as compared to pushing film. But I never knew that any member of the Vision500 family could withstand a 3 2/3 stop push.</p>

<p>TV shows are shot in S16, as well as Super35 3-perf. Despite neither being a format that can be natively played back in a projector, tv shows are usually not broadcast via a film projector and thus its easier to shoot on a format meant for either digital conversion or optical conversion to 35mm, anamorphic, etc. I've seen some S16 work, mastered in HD, that looks just as good as 35mm.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>If you look at a single movie frame, it's quite grainy. The 24fps reduces the apparent grain and the screen is pretty far away, making the enlargement much less than you imagine.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I was recently in my local lab and I saw someone had taken a single actual frame from Hitchcocks 'Rear Window' (God knows how he came by it) and had printed it up,complete with sprocket holes, to about 30x40 and it was unbelievably grainy, to the point of being almost unacceptable really under normal circumstances(I don't know how fast the film was).<br /> It was a nice shot though of James Stewart behind his camera looking particularly paranoid.</p>